The Scarlet Thief

by Paul Fraser Collard

  Molly was dead.

  Jack slowly became aware of the shouting, the cacophony of bellowing voices, the noise and bustle of soldiers, the dusty floor reverberating to the thump of army boots, the air full of braying voices of command.

  ‘Stay where you are, Lark.’

  Firm hands took hold of his upper arms, holding him hard as if he was expected to make a bolt for the door at any moment.

  Jack blinked hard at the tears clouding his vision and tried to make sense of what was happening.

  The room was full of redcoats. Half a dozen soldiers crowded into the cramped confines of the laundry’s outer reception room.

  ‘Molly?’ Jack’s voice wavered as he spoke.

  ‘Easy, lad. Behave yourself now.’ The voice was firm, devoid of compassion.

  ‘Where’s Slater?’

  ‘Colour Sergeant Slater is in the guardroom. God alone knows what happened here but it’s over now.’

  The horror surged through Jack’s mind. His head sagged with despair and he would have fallen had the two redcoats not been holding him.

  ‘Come on, lad, time to sort yourself out. You have to come with us. You’ve raised one hell of a shit storm and you’re right at the damn centre.’

  ‘It was Slater, he—’

  ‘Stow it. Save it for the colonel because I ain’t interested. I’ve been told to take you to the guardroom and keep you there.’

  ‘Guardroom?’ Jack’s head lifted and he stared at the corporal of the guard. He felt the redcoats holding him tighten their grip on his arms. Jack closed his eyes as he realised the small party of redcoats had not come to his rescue, they were here to detain him. To lock him away while the officers made sense of the dreadful events that had led to a young woman losing her life.

  ‘Attention!’

  The door to the guardroom was snatched open and the corporal stationed outside the room commanded the room’s occupants to rise. The three wooden chairs scraped the floor in unison as the officer strode in. Jack had been sitting in morose silence, guarded by two of his fellow redcoats. Now he stood and stared at the figure of Captain Sloames who looked back at him with a mixture of disappointment and embarrassment.

  ‘At ease. Thank you, Corporal, you and your men may leave us.’ Sloames dismissed the men charged with guarding the prisoner. He kept up his scrutiny of Jack’s face as he did so, as if trying to discern his orderly’s guilt in his expression.

  ‘This is a most distressing episode, Lark, most distressing.’ Sloames held his hands behind his back and paced slowly around the room, looking more like a lawyer than an officer in the Queen’s army. ‘I have sent a message to the colonel and he has charged me to discover what events led to today’s terrible accident and to take whatever action I deem necessary. I have listened to Colour Sergeant Slater’s account of the events and in the interests of justice I would like to hear your side of the story.’

  Jack looked at his officer, barely hearing the words spoken to him. He didn’t feel the pain in his body, the effects of Slater’s beating not registering in his mind. But his soul felt as if it had been cleaved in two.

  ‘Silence won’t help you now, Lark.’ Sloames spoke slowly as if to a difficult child. ‘You must tell me what happened.’

  ‘Slater.’ Jack whispered the name. ‘Slater killed her.’

  Sloames closed his eyes as if in sudden pain. He looked at Jack for what seemed like a long time before he spoke again.

  ‘Slater accuses you.’

  ‘Slater’s a fucking liar.’ Jack’s voice was raw.

  Sloames’s mouth twisted in distaste. ‘Mind your tongue. Need I remind you that you are in a great deal of trouble? One more such outburst and I shall leave this room immediately and abandon you to your fate. Is that clear?’

  Jack struggled to contain his grief. He knew how the battalion worked; Tom Black’s savage flogging on a false charge was all the evidence Jack needed to understand that nothing he could say would make a jot of difference. Slater had committed the foulest crime but Jack could not touch him.

  Sloames took Jack’s silence as leave to continue.

  ‘Now. I have listened to Colour Sergeant Slater’s account. It is clear there has been a most dreadful accident.’

  ‘Accident?’ Jack could not fully believe what he was hearing. ‘Slater was trying to rape her! I stopped him and he killed her.’ Jack felt his eyes fill. ‘He killed her!’ he shouted, his voice wavering with pain.

  The room returned to silence.

  ‘I will carry out a full and proper investigation, Lark, I can assure you of that.’ Sloames’s discomfort was obvious. ‘However, without any witnesses the situation is very . . .’ he paused, an apologetic smile on his face, ‘difficult. It may not surprise you to know that Slater blames you for the incident. He claims he tried to stop you attacking the girl and you fought him.’

  ‘And because Slater is a fucking sergeant he gets away with it.’

  Sloames scowled. ‘There is a proper process that will be followed.’ He lowered his voice, coming to stand next to Jack so he could speak softly and still be heard. ‘But it really is better for everyone if the details of this most dreadful accident are cleared up without delay.’

  ‘Better for who?’ Jack sneered the words.

  Sloames didn’t rise to the bait. ‘We have to think of the regiment, Lark.’

  Jack looked into his officer’s face. He could see Sloames’s distress, he was too used to being with his master to miss it. He let his head fall so that his chin rested on his chest. None of this was Sloames’s fault. And nothing would bring Molly back. Jack felt his grief wash over him, obliterating his anger in a wave of misery.

  ‘Slater will not be allowed to get away with this, Jack. He will be punished.’ Sloames placed his hand on Jack’s shoulder.

  Jack inhaled deeply. He knew who was to blame. It didn’t matter what the army did or didn’t do.

  Molly was gone.

  Sloames patted Jack’s shoulder. ‘I will speak to the colonel. In the circumstances I’m sure he would be content if we were to leave quickly.’

  ‘So the whole thing will be hushed up.’ Jack spoke in a matter-of-fact manner, holding on to his calmness with a huge effort of will.

  ‘We must consider the name of the regiment. Nothing good will come of a scandal.’

  Jack felt defeat wash over him. He let the tears come, felt them scalding his cheeks as he wept for his loss.

  Sloames backed away, sensitive to his orderly’s distress. As he reached the door, he turned to speak one last time.

  ‘We are to go to war, Lark. I said we would go together and we shall. We shall leave this place and find us both a new life.’ Sloames paused. ‘You will always have a place at my side, Jack. No matter what happens, I shall not abandon you.’

  Sloames quietly opened the door, leaving Jack alone for the first time since Molly’s death.

  Jack slumped back into his chair and succumbed to his grief. Through his tears he felt a part of his being harden. Like a rock in a wild, surging river, his desire for revenge stood firm against the torrent of despair.

  One day Slater would be made to pay for his crime.

  It was dark when the coach pulled through the barrack gatehouse and trundled on to the road that led to London. The lamps on the coach cast out a miserly light, throwing shadows on to the streets. The barracks and the sentries stationed outside for the long dreary hours of guard duty quickly melted into the darkness.

  From his perch on top of the carriage, Jack stared back at his former home, his lonely vigil kept long after it had disappeared from sight. As the coach picked its way out of the confines of the narrow streets, he buried his head in his heavy greatcoat, turning up the wide collar so that it smothered his face. Hiding the tears that flowed freely down his
cheeks.

  Beneath him, from within the warm fug of the coach’s interior, the sound of comradely laughter could be heard. Captain Sloames and the other passengers had already enjoyed the first of numerous bottles of claret they had with them to keep out the cold. The sound of their laughter did nothing to warm the chill in Jack’s soul, their mirth only adding to his loneliness.

  His back ached abominably, the jarring ride sending sharp spasms of pain running up and down his spine. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the pain, savouring the stabs of agony, using them to forget his despair.

  He had been taken under guard from his confinement directly to Sloames’s rooms where he had quickly packed for their hurried departure. He had remained in the rented rooms until the hired coach had arrived to spirit them away, taking them away from the place where Jack had hoped to find such happiness. Like a felon fleeing the scene of his crime, he was disappearing into the night.

  The carriage quickly picked up speed as it bucked and scrabbled its way on to the turnpike. Jack gripped his seat hard, enduring the discomfort and the cold as best he could. Despite everything that had happened, he felt a tremble of excitement deep inside him, a tiny frisson of expectation that he had embarked on a great journey that would take him to the far reaches of the globe. He was a soldier on his way to war.

  A new path to the future was opening up before him. No one, least of all him, could see where it would take him.

  ‘Lark! For the love of heaven attend to me at once!’

  ‘Sir!’ Jack hurried into the room. He had been dozing in a scuffed leather armchair in what passed for a sitting room in the lodging they had taken at a coaching inn in the depths of the Kent countryside. The inn was dank, a rotting, mildew-infested dump of a place that survived by fleecing any traveller foolish enough to spend time in it. Ordinarily, Sloames would never have tolerated even a single night in such a foul establishment but he had been given little choice.

  For Sloames was sick.

  ‘I have been ill again.’ Sloames’s voice wavered with emotion.

  Jack did his best to hide his distaste. ‘Very good, sir. I shall fetch some clean water.’

  He admired the genteel turn of phrase that Sloames had used but there was no hiding the stench of shit that overwhelmed the room’s more usual smell of rot, damp and decay. For the third time that day, Sloames had shat himself, the relentless disease that had him in its bitter grip turning the young officer’s insides into so much slurry.

  Jack bustled from the room, determined to keep his mind on the task at hand. Better that than dwell on the shame or on the fear that was stamped so clearly on Sloames’s drawn and whey-coloured face.

  The illness had been sudden, violent and unstoppable. What had started as a mild summer cold soon developed into an uncontrollable fever that had rendered Sloames delirious and forced them to seek shelter. The days had passed by in a blur as Jack undertook the distasteful process of cleaning the diarrhoea from his officer’s body and trying to slake his constant thirst. Throughout it all, Sloames had drifted in and out of consciousness, enjoying only occasional periods of lucidity as the illness laid waste to his body.

  ‘Here we are, sir. Soon have you sorted.’ Jack did his best to reassure his officer as he applied himself to the unpleasant task, swallowing the urge to retch as the stench of his officer’s voided bowels clogged his throat. He worked as quickly as he dared, trying to avoid the patches of livid broken skin that made Sloames hiss in pain if a careless fingernail scraped it. Yet, even working with haste, it took many long minutes to wipe away the last of the foul fluids.

  Throughout it all, Sloames lay quiet. It was only as his orderly pulled the clean cotton drawers to his navel that he spoke again.

  ‘I thank you, Lark. You do me a kind service.’

  Jack rose from his knees, hiding the cloth with its shaming brown streaks behind his back. It was hard to find the right words to form a reply. He felt he should try to make light of the situation, offer his sick officer the traditional bland reassurances that he would soon be well. But they had already been said too many times before, the blandishments of the healthy to the sick worthless in the face of such a ravaging illness.

  So Jack said nothing, merely nodding in acknowledgement of the words of thanks.

  ‘Lark.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I need to speak to you.’ Sloames sucked in huge gulps of air as he struggled to control his distress. ‘I need to speak of the future.’

  The future, which had once seemed so full of promise, now hung around their necks like a gravestone. The word mocked them. Jack, who had already lost so much, had clung to a future with Sloames with all the fervour of a religious convert. Now that lay in tatters, destroyed by the illness that was laying waste to Sloames’s body.

  ‘We must discuss what is to happen.’ Sloames delivered the words with stony determination.

  ‘You’ll get better, sir.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’ Sloames delivered the admonishment with some of his former force. ‘I am dying. There, it is said. I am dying and nothing you or I say will alter that fact.’

  ‘We can call back the doctor.’

  Sloames shook his head. ‘Do not even suggest it. I’ve had quite enough of that fat fool blistering and bleeding me to last a lifetime.’ Sloames shuddered, whether at the memory of the local doctor’s enthusiastic treatment or at the ill-chosen phrase, Jack could not tell.

  ‘I’ll look after you. I’ll get you well.’

  ‘You are many things, Lark, but I doubt you are a worker of miracles. Now, be quiet and listen. When I am dead, you’ll be cast adrift. You’ll be without a place. I think we both understand that you cannot go back to the regiment even if they would accept you. That leaves you at the mercy of the damned clerks and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. So, we must apply ourselves to conjuring an alternative. We must find you a future.’ Sloames’s voice had died to a barely audible whisper and Jack was forced to lean close so he could make out the words. With an effort, Sloames took his weight on to his elbows, lifting his head clear of the stained bed.

  ‘You must find your way to our new regiment and go on campaign.’ Sloames fixed his orderly with a determined stare, a fierce glimmer in his eyes. ‘You must seize the glory that is rightfully ours. Do you understand? You must do it. You must. Find my glory.’

  The effort of speaking had taken its toll on Sloames and he slumped back into the stinking sheets and closed his eyes.

  Jack sat in the scuffed and battered leather armchair, his fingers absent-mindedly picking at its scarred surface. He was alone with his thoughts and with his fears.

  He did not know what would become of him when Sloames finally succumbed to the illness. Sloames wanted him to join the campaign that was about to start. But if he joined the regiment of fusiliers as Sloames had urged, he would have no place there, he would be a stranger, bereft of the ties that bound the men in the ranks together.

  The thought of that loneliness made him think of Molly. He had convinced himself that going on campaign as Sloames’s orderly would numb the pain of her death. But he now knew he had been foolish to think that. He had lost the woman he loved, just as he was about to lose the man who held the reins to his future. When Sloames died, he would have lost everything.

  Molly had once told him to get a grip and make his own future if he wanted to get anywhere in life. The words haunted him. He got up from his chair and pulled Sloames’s uniform coat from its peg. The fabric was soft, the weave so much finer than the drab, clumsy cloth of the ordinary red coat he wore. Jack ran his hands over the heavy bullion epaulets that defined the captain’s rank, searching for the courage to dare to do something which would, if he were discovered, lead only to the scaffold and a long, drawn-out death.

  It was time to prove he could do it. He owed Molly that at least. He
would gamble his life to better himself and he would do it for his Molly.

  He would do as Sloames had suggested. But he would do it in a way that his officer would never have imagined.

  For he had nothing left to lose.

  The room was as cold and clammy as a corpse. The fire had died down as Jack slept, a muted glow in its smoky depths the only reminder of its former warmth. A solitary gas lamp that Jack had balanced carelessly on the edge of a battered travelling chest hissed and spluttered, before its light went out, fuel exhausted, its flame untended and ignored.

  It was quieter without the harsh hiss of the gas lamp, almost silent except for the slow, methodical tick of the silver fob watch which Jack had placed on the mahogany dressing table, its chain neatly coiled round its case. The watch lay at the head of a formation of tortoiseshell-handled brushes, combs and razors, next to their brown leather carry case, precisely as Sloames liked them to be laid out.

  Sloames listened to his fob watch, cursing the sound of each second ticking by, hating the audible acknowledgment that his life was nearly over, the passing of time as inexorable as the approach of his death. He lay on his back in the darkness, his head bent to one side so that he was facing the room’s single garret window. The window was streaked with filth, congealed bird muck covering much of the uneven glass. He longed to enjoy one last view of the stars. Yet even that simple pleasure was denied him.

  He yearned to rise from the filthy sheets. To peel back the stained and stinking counterpane and cross the scuffed, soiled, floorboards. To throw the window open so he could drink in one last mouthful of the crisp night air. Instead, he was a prisoner in his putrid bed. His ruined body his jailer. The illness that had reduced him to a living cadaver his immutable sentence.

  The seconds ticked by, bringing Sloames ever closer to his end, this last period of consciousness a final misery his illness chose to inflict upon him. He cursed the irony of fate that should condemn him to die of disease in the benign surroundings of the Kent countryside when he had spent a small fortune to avoid a posting to the fever-ravaged Indies where sickness and death were commonplace.